


he does it anyways

by andthentheybow



Series: of false gods and fake kings and everything in between [9]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Minecraft IRL, Non-Linear Narrative, Toby Smith | Tubbo Angst, Toby Smith | Tubbo-centric, no beta we die like Tubbo at the festival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:14:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28325157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andthentheybow/pseuds/andthentheybow
Summary: he is no hero and he is no villain. he is somewhere in the middle, somewhere in between. he is the grey area, an explosion of color, the forgotten son, the lonely king.and he hates it.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Clay | Dream & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Eret & Niki | Nihachu & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Eret & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Jschlatt & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Niki | Nihachu & Toby Smith | Tubbo, No Romantic Relationship(s), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot
Series: of false gods and fake kings and everything in between [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2001208
Comments: 41
Kudos: 201





	he does it anyways

**Author's Note:**

> don't be creepy about content creators, this is my interpretation of their personas, if they're uncomfortable it'll be taken down, etc etc
> 
> some notes on this addition:  
> \- tw for brief suicidal ideology and brief mentions of what could be taken as a panic attack  
> \- this series is a bit of a canon divergence? just in the terms that i started this series before the "three lives" thing was canon and i'm too stubborn to change anything. that means there's no ghostbur, though that isn't really an issue for this fic, i just felt like i should inform anyone that's new to this series  
> \- finally, this one's for my sister who finally got my ao3 account and loves tubbo, have some pain bitch

he doesn’t know why he still tries. maybe because it’s the only thing he can do. maybe because he has to. maybe because he can.

he tries. he tries so damn hard, to be a good president, to be a good son, to be a good secretary, to be a good soldier, to be a good friend.

he doesn’t know if he’s succeeding. he doesn’t know if he should stop. he wants to stop. he can't. he wants to rest. he doesn’t want to keep going.

he does it anyways.

-‘|’-

he is no hero and he is no villain. he is somewhere in the middle, somewhere in between. he is the grey area, an explosion of color, the forgotten son, the lonely king.

and he hates it. he hates not having a set role. tommy is the hero and schlatt is the villain and techno is the anarchist. wilbur is the composer and dream is the antihero and sapnap is the instigator. niki is the lover and eret is the king and george is the other. and he- he is somewhere in between. he is the president but not, the main character’s best friend (is he still?), the spy on the inside.

and he-

hates it.

every title they try to give him he hates, because every title they try to give him backfires. it backfires on him and it backfires on those he loves. and he’s sick of it, but there’s nothing he can do.

-‘|’-

he is trapped in a box and there is nothing he can do. the concrete is suffocating and schlatt is laughing and techno is approaching him.

and fuck if he knows how he got himself into this situation. half of him wishes wilbur would just blow it up already, get it over with, anything to keep him from being slaughtered like an animal; trapped, nowhere to go, nothing he can do.

“i’m sorry, tubbo,” techno tells him. that’s a rocket launcher. there is a firework loaded into his crossbow and it is pointed at his face. “i’ll try to make this as painless and colorful as possible.”

it’s certainly colorful. it certainly isn’t painless. techno launches one firework into his chest and it doesn’t kill him. he can hear screaming and it must be his, because all he can feel is pain blossoming from his right shoulder. he knows, he just knows, that this is going to be one of those deaths that leaves more of a mark than any other, he knows this is going to hurt him, and thank ender he already set his respawn point in pogtopia.

techno shoots again. he can see, through the haze of pain, a rocket coming for his head.

and then-

(and then-)

-‘|’-

sometimes he’s a little bit afraid of wilbur. like now, when wilbur is staring him down and crowing about being the villains and blowing his kingdom to hell.

it’s why when wilbur gives him the presidency, he knows that something is wrong. it’s why when wilbur blows it up, he isn’t surprised.

he saw wilbur as an older brother figure throughout the entirety of the war. wilbur was his president. was being the key word.

now, wilbur is gone, returned to phil’s world, to heal. ender, what he wouldn’t give to take a break. to heal. he doesn’t want to be the president.

he does it anyways.

-‘|’-

on nights when it all gets to be too much to bear, he sneaks away to eret’s castle. he knows that eret is not his sibling, niki is not his sister, but they both may as well be. he is the forgotten son and has always been the forgotten son, even after tommy takes him to meet his father and phil offers to adopt him.

eret and niki may as well be his siblings. they are the ones that make sure he is taken care of, that parent him to no end, that tell him they know he can handle himself, but they want to take care of him anyways. because he’s a kid, and he’s their little brother.

in the dead of night, at the top of one of eret’s towers, the two curl under blankets and watch the stars. there’s a bruise on the junction between his shoulder and neck where schlatt squeezed a little too hard. eret held him for a long moment, not too tight, enough that he could escape if he really needed to.

in the dead of night, inside niki’s bakery, the two curl under blankets and watch the oven. there’s a red mark on the side of niki’s face and tubbo can’t stretch his arms back without hurting. niki has him wrapped in her arms and she’s making them a fresh loaf of bread. he knows he’ll have to be gone in the morning.

in the middle of the day, on a hill overlooking l’manberg, the three curl together on a picnic blanket and laugh and watch the clouds. they are something other, the three of them together, something more. they are not the heroes. they are the king. she is the lover. he is the president-son-secretary-soldier-friend.

it gets lonely being a fake king, a false god. the three of them band together to try and drive the loneliness away.

and they do. together, they do.

-‘|’-

sapnap kills his bees.

and he thinks, if he wasn’t already part of this war, he’d go to war for that.

because ender damn, all he wants is some peace and quiet. he wants to live at his jungle base with his bees and be happy.

but if he has to, then fine. he’ll go to war.

everyone underestimates him very easily, it seems. it seems like they forget that he’s not quite as human as they think he is. he’s like george, something other, except his otherness doesn’t come in the form of creation. it comes in the form of manipulation, of hacking.

he does it a couple of times, long before the war starts, and dream tells him to knock it off or he’s gone. there’s only one god here, and that god is dream.

he knocks it off. he’s having a good time here, with tommy and wilbur and eret, and he doesn’t think he’d trade that for anything.

-‘|’-

he is not having a good time here. ender, he wishes he hadn’t promised he wouldn’t hack, because this is hellish. eret has betrayed him, leaving them all with scars from the deaths that are the most impactful.

the final control room becomes a graveyard. he visits it sometimes, the cemetery where a revolution almost died, where their leaders did die. he sits there and screams and throws things against the stone walls.

he probably shouldn’t be visiting a graveyard like the final control room. he does it anyways.

it’s calming, almost, being here. it’s a reminder of the ways things were before. before eret’s betrayal. before techno’s betrayal.

there are two things his two most impactful deaths have in common: they were done by someone he thought he could trust, and he’s already forgiven them both for it. tommy tells him he’s crazy, for how easily he forgives eret, how easily he forgives techno. but it’s simple, really, when it all gets broken down. eret apologizes. techno was peer pressured.

he forgives them. that doesn’t mean he’s going to forget.

-‘|’-

(and then-)

and then-

he wakes up. he is in the in-between, and he reaches up to feel his face, his chest, where the fireworks hit him. there is no pain, not in this in-between space, the void. he can feel tears bubbling behind his eyes and he pushes them down.

and then he turns and sees dream, the true god of the world, the only one who can access the in-between without dying first. he’s died enough times to know that dream comes to send them back, and that dream normally doesn’t show himself when he’s in the void.

and now, dream is lifting the mask off his head and holding out his arms. he dives into them, allowing himself to sob, and dream holds him tight. in another world, they could have been brothers, dream cheering louder than anyone as he beats the competition, dream saving him from schlatt’s grasp, dream stopping the war. not in this world.

in this world, he chokes out that wilbur said techno wouldn’t hurt him, wilbur promised, and dream holds him tighter.

  
“i have to send you back, kid,” the masked god says.

“i can’t do this anymore,” he chokes out. “please, i want to go-”

he doesn’t want to go. he wants to stay here, but he wants things to be different. he knows they never will be. dream knows it, too, and gives him a sad look and slips the mask back on and says, “not yet.”

he does not want to go back.

he does it anyways.

-‘|’-

he wakes up and the pain is back, and everything hurts. the entire right side of his body is screaming and he knows there is no blood, but there will be scars. this is one of those deaths, the really impactful ones, that the dead can’t escape from.

he cries out, pulling himself to his feet to try and escape, clawing at his suit jacket. he needs it off, he needs it gone, he thought they wouldn’t hurt him, he just planned his own execution-

he manages to chuck the jacket onto the ground and he can feel the rough skin under his hands, and he’s scratching at it, trying to make it go away. he looks up and tommy and niki are both standing the doorway, and he can feel the tears welling up behind his eyes again. he is so, so tired.

tommy runs at him and pulls him into a hug and it’s the safest he’s felt in weeks. he lets his best friend hold him and chokes out, “wilbur said he wouldn’t hurt me,” and that’s the wrong thing to say, because techno beats tommy to a pulp (it stays in the pit, it stays in the pit, it stays in the pit) (violence is the only universal language, tommy, is what techno says, and techno has never been more wrong).

later, they’re standing in tommy’s room. he’s picking at his skin, and niki grabs his hands to stop him, tells him it’s unhealthy.

“i can make myself a bed,” he says with a tired sigh.

“no,” tommy says immediately. they haven’t slept in the same bed since before the election. he knows neither of them have slept much since before the election, either. so he crawls into bed next to his best friend and tommy pulls his hands away when he starts scratching at the scars again, and niki pulls up a chair and watches the door because none of them say it, but none of them really trust wilbur or techno anymore.

-‘|’-

there is a ghost that leaves him a compass. it glows with a purple magic, and inscribed on the top are the words ‘your tommy.’

for the first time since the explosion, he cries.

-‘|’-

tommy yells at him to stick close, and he promises he will. they’re going to war, and they’re going to fight. they’re going to fight until the bitter end, and if this is the bitter end, then so be it. he’s tired. he’s ready to rest. he doesn’t want to fight.

he does it anyways.

everything explodes.

he sees quackity get tossed into the air by the blast. he himself is thrown backward. and l’manberg is destroyed.

they rebuild. of course they rebuild. this is their land, and they are not going to let it be taken from them by a man who lost his mind when he lost his nation.

l’manberg is not a kingdom, it is a country. it is a symphony. they will write a new one together.

-‘|’-

he does not want to be president.

he’s a kid, damnit. he thought that when this war was over, he’d be able to rest. he and tommy could sit back and relax as wilbur ran his nation, finished his symphony. they could be kids.

wilbur makes tommy the president. tommy declines. wilbur makes tubbo the president. and tubbo wants to decline, so, so badly.

he should have. he’s the president of a crater. at night, they offer to build him a house, and he flatly refuses. he curls up in eret’s arms, clutching niki’s hands, fundy near them but not touching. eret gestures and fundy settles between him and niki.

“we’re safe,” eret murmurs, and he knows they’re not. he doesn’t want to sleep.

he does it anyways.

when he wakes up, half of eret’s cloak is wrapped around him. the other half is around fundy. eret and niki are talking to phil a bit away.

he gets up and he gets to work. he’s the president of a crater, and it’s a damn good crater. it’ll be the best ender-damned crater in the whole ender-damned world.

-‘|’-

the only presidency he really has to go off of is schlatt. schlatt, who cared more about the power than the people, who cared more about his drinks than his cabinet. sometimes schlatt would move too fast and he and quackity would both flinch and schlatt would laugh at them, actually laugh.

it was warranted, though, wasn’t it? because he knows that quackity, being the vice president, probably got the brunt of it, but he still got a fair amount too. a fair amount of too-tight shoulder squeezes and hits to the back of the head and on one very eventful day, a fresh black eye. he refused to go to pogtopia for a week after that one, claiming in messages to wilbur that he couldn’t get away from schlatt for long enough.

and it was awful, because schlatt was kind, too. schlatt apologized when he winced and made sure he was taking care of himself and actually valued his opinion. in another world, schlatt could have been his father, encouraging his ideas and allowing him free reign and holding him tight after a long day.

in this world, he stops as he hears the announcement that schlatt is dead, and he almost rejoices. he feels upset, conflicted. he knows he shouldn’t, he knows he should be happy, but he does anyways.

-‘|’-

he knows quackity feels the same. schlatt and quackity had their weird whatever-it-was, and he doesn’t really care, it’s not his business. he knows quackity flinched just as hard as he did, and there was a reason that quackity turned traitor and started working for pogtopia. quackity was there with tommy when wilbur almost blew it all to hell, and he respects the guy for it.

but he was schlatt’s man, too, just the same as him and fundy. they were the ones schlatt relied on, and they relied on schlatt in turn. he and quackity came to an agreement, before the war, that the only ones they could trust were each other. they would stick together. and it killed them both, to not trust the rest of their friends the same, but they were the only ones who truly knew what living under schlatt was like. they were the only ones with nightmares of ram horns and fireworks and broken glass.

he makes quackity his vice president after tommy’s exile. in turn, quackity makes him the secretary of state of el rapids. and with tommy gone- well, he doesn’t trust quackity, per say. quackity is too ambitious, makes bad decisions. techno sticks his pickaxe through quackity’s teeth, or whatever it was he said, and he respects quackity for even getting that far, but not for directly ignoring his orders the first time they had the techno discussion.

it’s one of those deaths that leaves a mark. quackity offers him a grim smile.

he does not know if he can trust quackity. he does it anyways.

-‘|’-

he is forced to exile his best friend.

he calls tommy selfish and he knows it’s a lie. he knows tommy wants nothing more than to help, and he knows tommy cares about him. but hearing about the discs- the fucking discs, that have gotten them into war after war after war, that have been the root of all their problems-

“i only care about the discs!” tommy cries, just like dream did. they’re standing in the meeting room and fundy and quackity and ranboo are watching them. they are standing on opposite ends of the table and he thinks he might cry.

“you only care about the discs, huh?” he says, and he can see the regret in tommy’s eyes, but it’s too late. the words are already out of his mouth.

“if i can’t be the new schlatt, you can’t be the new wilbur,” he says. history is doomed to repeat itself. he exiles tommy and it is the worst thing he has ever done.

dream tells him that he made the right choice. he thinks dream is wrong.

-‘|’-

tommy is his best friend, and he doesn’t think he would trade that for anything. tommy is invited to dream’s world, and you don’t say no to a guy like dream, so he assumes that’s the last time they’ll be seeing each other for a while. but it isn’t. tommy brings tubbo with, the two of them a package deal.

tommy is his best friend, and he doesn’t think he would trade that for anything. tommy starts a revolution, and he and wilbur ask him to join. he assumes that’s the last time they’ll be fighting anyone for a while. but it isn’t. he gets killed again and again and again.

tommy is his best friend, and he doesn’t think he would trade that for anything. they ask him to be the secretary of state, and he agrees. he assumes that’s the last time there’ll be a change in power for a while. but it isn’t. schlatt wins the election. he remains secretary of state. tommy and wilbur are exiled.

tommy is his best friend, and he trades it for the good of the nation that has been forced upon his head like a crown. he thinks it’ll be the last time he’ll see tommy for a while. but it isn’t. tommy thinks he’s a hallucination, tommy thinks he’s there to watch, tommy thinks of falling and really thinks he isn’t going to do anything about it.

“surely not,” he says, staring up at the tower, and he knows surely not is correct. he knows that tommy would never. because tommy can’t fall, tommy flies.

he is done with his story revolving around tommy’s. he can handle himself.

maybe his story doesn’t revolve solely around tommy’s. maybe their stories revolve around each other, because in the end, it’s tommy-and-tubbo, a package deal.

because tommy is his best friend. tommy will always be his best friend, because that’s his tommy, he’s got the compass to prove it. that’s his tommy, and he’s tommy’s tubbo, and that’s the way it’s always been. that’s the way it’s supposed to be. and no matter where they are, that’s the way it is.

-‘|’-

he knows why he still tries. because it’s the only thing he can do. because he has to. because he can.

he tries. he tries so damn hard, to be a good president, to be a good son, to be a good secretary, to be a good soldier, to be a good friend.

he doesn’t know if he’s succeeding. he doesn’t know if he’ll ever succeed. but he tries, and he does the best he can, and that’s enough.

that’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos/etc validate me!!!! come vibe w me on twitter & tumblr @andthentheybow


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